The Holistic Advocacy Intensives are interactive, advocacy trainings designed to demystify the “child welfare system” and build the power of communities, allies and co-conspirators to interrupt harm and support families. These sessions offer tools for advocacy, early defense, the truth about mandated reporting and reparative justice—and are grounded in the wisdom of those directly impacted.
BLU’s Advocacy Intensive allows you to earn CLE credits, while gaining hands-on training, deep insights, and practical tools to support families impacted by the child welfare system.
At BLU, we offer two distinct training tracks—Open-Access Intensives and Contracted Organizational Trainings—to ensure our Advocacy Intensives are both equitable and sustainable.
Open-Access Intensives are designed to center and prioritize directly impacted parents, caregivers, grassroots organizers, and small teams and defender agencies who may not have institutional backing or access to professional development funds. These intensives operate on a sliding scale, allowing participants to self-select the tier that reflects their financial reality. This model ensures that those most harmed by systems of family policing are not priced out of critical knowledge, tools, and organizing spaces. The sliding scale reflects our values: solidarity for those with limited access, sustainability for our programming, and redistribution for those with resources to help underwrite the costs for others
Contracted Organizational Trainings are tailored for larger organizations—such as law schools, and advocacy institutions—with dedicated budgets for training and staff development. These institutions are charged at rates proportionate to their financial capacity, based on annual budget size. These private trainings allow us to meet organizational needs while also generating revenue that supports our broader mission, including our ability to subsidize open-access participation.
This dual-track approach matters because equity in access must be built into every layer of our work. The truth is, transformative advocacy training has often been inaccessible to the very people most affected by family regulation systems. Our structure allows us to redistribute resources, center directly impacted voices, and ensure the financial sustainability of our organization. Every dollar raised through organizational contracts and redistribution tiers goes directly toward paying system-impacted trainers, compensating lived experts, and funding BLU’s movement-building efforts. This isn’t just a training model—it’s a justice strategy.
Open to individuals and small teams including system-impacted parents and caregivers, allies, social workers, educators, doulas, mutual aid organizers, health workers, and NY State defender organizations.
Indicators of this category include:
Organizations can hire BLU to deliver customized versions of our advocacy intensive for their staff or community base. There must be at least (2) facilitators present.
Rates Per Facilitator – Per Facilitator
Copyright © 2025 Black Families Love and Unite - All Rights Reserved.
Email: info@blackfamiliesloveandunite.org
Black and Brown families are being separated now more than ever. Please show your support by donating to our programs, workshops, and trainings that reimagine punitive systems for our communities today.